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nesolutions  pas 
Conf  Pam  #484 


RESOLUTIONS 


PASSED    BY   THE 


GENERAL  ASSEMBLY  OF  GEORGIA, 

ON  THE  19TH  DAY  OF  MARCH,  1864, 

DECLARING  THE  LATE  ACT  OF  CONGRESS  FOR 

THE  SUSPENSION  OF  THE  WRIT  OF  HABEAS 

CORPUS    UNCONSTITUTIONAL ; 

ALSO,  RESOLUTIONS,  PASSED    ON    THE    SAME 
DAY,  SETTING  FORTH  THE  PRINCIPLES  IN- 
VOLVED IN  THE  CONl'EST   WITH  T|IE 
LINCOLN  GOVERNMENT,    AND  THE 
TERMS  UPON    WHICH   PEACE 
, SHOULD    BE    SOUGHT. 


BOUGHTON,  NISBET.  BARNES  &  MOORE,  Stat^  Priiiters, 

MILLEDGEVILLE,     QA, 
18G4. 


V  i 


RESOLUTIONS, 

Introduced  bt  Hok.  Lintojt   SxEPHWrt. 


Resolution*  on  the  Susjtaision   of  the  Habeas  Corpui, 

The  General  Assembly  of  the  State  of  Georgia  do  Raolve^ 
let.  That,  under  the  Constitution  of  the  Coofederate 
States,  there  is  no  power  to  suspend  the  privilege  of  the 
writ  of  habtat  corpus,  but  in  a  manner  and  to  an  extent, 
regulated  and  limited  by  the  express,  emphatic  and  un- 
qualified Constitutional  prohibitions,  that  "No  person 
shall  be  deprived  of  life,  liberty,  or  property,  without 
due  process  of  liiw,"  and  that  "The  right  of  the  people  to 
be  lecure  in  their  persons,  houses,  papers  and  effecti, 
against  unreasonable  searches,  and  seizures,  shall  not  be  tIo- 
lated,  and  no  warrants  shall  is5ue  but  upon  probable  cause, 
Bupported  by  oath  or  affirmation,  and  particularly  descri- 
bing the  places  to  be  searched,  and  the  perfons  or  things 
to  be  seized."  And  this  conclusion  results  from  the  two 
following  reasons  :  First,  because  the  power  to  suspend  the 
writ,  is  derived  not  from  express  delegation,  but  only  from 
implication,  which  must  always  yieled  to  express,  conflict- 
ing and  restricting  words.  Second,  because  this  power 
being  found  nowhere  in  the  Constitution,  but  in  words, 
which  are  copied  from  the  original  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  as  adopted  in  1787,  must  yield  in  all  points 
of  conflict  to  the  subsequent  amendments  of  1789,  which 
are  also  copied  into  our  present  Constitution,  and  which 
contain  the  prohibitions  above  quoted,  and  were  adopted 
with  the  declared  purpose  of  adding  further  declaratory 
and  restrictive  clauses. 

2nd.  That  "due  process  of  law"  for  seizing  the  peraoni 
of  the  people,  as  defined  by  the  Gonatitutita  it«clf,  is  a 


warrant  issued  upon  probable  cause,  supported  by  oath  or 
affirmation,  and  particularly  describing  the  persons  to  be 
seized,  and  the  issuing  of  such  warrants,  being  the  exer- 
tion of  a  Judicial  power,  is,  if  done  by  any  branch  of  the 
government  except  the  Judiciary,  a  plain  violation  of  that 
provision  of  the  Constitution,  which  vests  the  Judicial 
power  in  the  Courts  alone  ;  and  therefore,  all  seizures  of 
the  persons  of  the  people,  by  any  officer  of  the  Confeder- 
ate Government,  without  warrant,  and  all  warrants  for 
that  purpose,  from  any  but  a  Judicial  source,  are  in  the 
judgment  of  this  General  Assembly  unreasonable  and  un- 
constitutional. 

3rd.  That  the  recent  act  of  Congress  to  suspend  the 
privilege  of  the  writ  of  Habeas  Corpus  in  cases  of  arrests 
ordered  by  the  President,  Secretary  of  War,  or  General 
officer  commanding  the  Trans-Mississippi  Military  Depart- 
ment, is  an  attempt  to  sustain  the  military  authority  in  the 
exercise  of  the  Constitutional,  Judicial  function  of  issuing 
warrants,  and  to  give  validity  to  unconstitutional  seizures 
of  the  persons  of  the  people  ;  and  as  the  said  act,  by  its 
express  terms,  confines  its  operation  to  the  upholding  of 
this  class  of  unconstitutional  seizures,  the  whole  suspen- 
sion, attempted  to  be  authorized  by  it,  and  the  whole  act 
itself,  in  the  judgment  of  this  General  Assembly,  are  un- 
constitutional. 

4th.  That  in  the  judgment  of  this  General    Assembly, 
the  said  act  is  a  dangerous  assault  upon  the  Constitutional 
.  power  of  the  Courts,  and  upon  the  liberty  of  the  people, 
,  and  beyond  the  power  of  any  possible  necessity  to  justify 
it ;  and  while  our  Senators  and    Representatives  in  Con- 
gress are  earnestly  nrged  to  take  the  first  possible    oppor- 
tunity to  have   it  repealed,     \ve  refer  the  question  of  its 
validity  to  the  Courts,  with  the  hope,  that  the  peeple  and 
,  the  military  authorities  will  abide  by  the  decision. 
,      5tb.  That  as   Constitutional  Liberty  is   the  sole  object 
,  which  our  people,  and  our  noble  army  have,  in  our  present 
terrible  struggle  with  the   Government  of   Mr.  Lincoln,  so 
also  is  a   faithful  adherence  to  it,  on  the  part  of  our  o^n 
.  Government,    through  good  fortune  in  arms,  and  through 
bad,    one  of  the  great  elements   of  our  strength   and  final 
.  success  ;  because  the  constant    contrast,  of  Constitutional 
Government  on  our  part,  with  the  usurpations  and  tyran- 
nies, which  characterize  the  Government  of  our  enemy,  un- 
der the  ever   recurring  and  ever. false  plea  of  the  necessi- 
;  tiies  of  war,  will  have  the  double  effect  of  animating    our 
,  people  with   an  unconquerable  zeal,  and  of   inspiring  the 
people  of  the  North  more  and  more,  v^^ith  a  desire  and  de- 
.  termination  to  put  an  end  to  a  contest  which -is  waged  by 


their  Government  openly  against  aur  liberty  [and  as  truly, 
but  more  covertly,  against  their  own. 

THOS.     HARDEMAN, 
Speaker  House  Representatives. 

L.    CvRRINGTON, 

Clerk.  House  Representatives. 

PETER  CONE, 
President  of  Senate,  Pro.    Tern. 
L.  H.  Kenan, 

Secretary  of  Senate. 
Approved    March  19th,  1864. 

JOSEPH  E.  BROWN, 

Governor. 


INTRODUCED    BY  HON.    LINTON    STEPHENS. 

Resolutions  declaring  the  ground  on  which  the  Confederate 
States  stand  in  this  War,  and  the  terms  on  which  peace 
ought  to  be  offered  to  the  tnemij. 

The  General  Assemhhj  of  the  State  of  Georgia  do  resolve, 
1st.  That  to  secure  the  rights  of  life,  liberty,  and  the  pur- 
suit of  happiness,  "Governments  were  instituted  among 
men,  deriving  their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the 
governed  ;  that  whenever  any  form  of  government  becomes 
destructive  of  these  ends,  it  is  the  right  of  the  people  to 
alter  or  to  abolish  it,  and  to  institute  a  new  government, 
laying  its  foundations  on  such  principles,  and  organizing  its 
powers  in  such  form  as  shall  seem  to  them  most  likely  to 
effect  their  safety  and  happiness." 

2nd.  That  the  best  possible  commentary  upon  this  grand 
text  of  our  fathers  of  177(i,  is  their  accompanying  action, 
which  it  was  put  forth  to  justify;  and  that  action  was  the 
immortal  declaration  that  tiie  former  political  connection 
between  the  Colonies  and  the  State  of  Great  Britain  was 
dissolved  and  the  thirteen  Colonies  were,  and  of  right, 
ought  to  be,  not  one  independent  State,  but  thirteen  inde- 
pendent States,  each  of  them  being  such  a  "people"  as  had 
the  right,  whenever  they  chose  to  exercise  it,  to  separate 
themselves  from  a  political  association  and  government  of 
their  former  choice,  and  institute  a  new  government  to  suit 
themselves. 

ord.  That  if  Rhode  Island,  with  her  meagre  elements 
of  nationality,  was  such  a  "people"  in  1770,  when  her  sepa- 
ration from  the  government  and  people  of  Great  Britain 
took  place  ;  much  more  was  Georgia  and  each  of  the  other 
speeding  States,   with  their  large  territories,  populations 


and  resources,  such  a  "people,"  and  entitled  to  exercise  tbe 
same  right  in  ISOl,  when  they  decreed  their  separation 
from  the  Government  and  people  of  the  United  States  ; 
and  if  the  separation  was  rightful  in  the  first  case,  it  was 
more  clearly  so  in  the  last,  the  right  depending,  as  it  does 
in  the  case  of  every  "people"  for  whom  it  is  claimed,  simply 
upon  their  fitness  and  their  will  to  constitute  an  independ- 
ent State. 

4th.  That  this  right  was  perfect  in  each  of  the  States  to 
be  exercised  by  her  at  her  own  pleasure,  without  challenge 
or  resistance  from  any  other  power  whatsoever;  and  while 
these  Southern  States  had  long  had  reason  enough  to  jus- 
tify its  assertion  against  some  of  their  faithless  associates, 
yet,  remembering  the  dictate  of  "prudence"  that  "govern- 
ments long  established  should  not  be  changed  for  light  and 
transient  causes,"  they  forbore  a  resort  to  its  exercise,  un- 
til numbers  of  the  Northern  States,  State  after  State, 
through  a  series  of  years,  and  by  studied  legislation,  had 
arrayed  themselves  in  open  hostility  against  an  acknowledged 
provision  of  the  Constitution,  and  had  at  last  succeeded  in 
the  election  of  a  President  who  was  the  avowed  exponent 
and  executioner  of  their  faithless  designs  against  the  Con- 
stitutional rights  of  their  Southern  sisters — rights  which  had 
been  often  adjudicated  by  the  Courts,  and  which  were  nev- 
er denied  by  the  abolitionists  themselves,  but  upon  the 
ground  that  the  Constitution  itself  v;as  void  whenever  it 
came  in  conflict  with  a  "higher  law"  which  they  could  not 
find  among  the  laws  of  God,  and  which  depended,  for  its  ex- 
position, solely  upon  the  elastic  consciences  of  rancor- 
ous partisans.  Tlie  Constitution  thus  broken,  and  delib- 
erately and  persistently  repudiated  by  several  of  the  States 
who  were  parties  to  it,  ceased,  according  to  universal 
law,  to  be  binding  on  any  of  the  rest,  and  those  States 
who  had  been  wronged  by  the  breach,  were  justified  in 
using  their  rights  to  provide  "new  guards  for  their  future 
security." 

5th.  That  the  reasons  which  justified  the  separation 
when  it  took  place,  have  been  vindicated  and  enhanced 
in  force  by  the  subsequent  course  of  the  Government  of 
Mr.  Lincoln — br  his  contemptuous  rejection  of  the  Con- 
federate Commissioners  who  were  sent  to  Washington  be- 
fore the  war,  to  settle  all  mattersjof  difierence  without  a 
resort  to  arms,  thus  evincing  his  determination  to  have 
war:  by  his  armed  occupation  of  the  territory  of  the  Con- 
federate States,  and  especially  by  his  treacherous  attempt- 
to  reinforce  his  garrisons  in  xheir  midst,  after  they  had,  in 
pursuance  of  their  right,  withdrawn  their  people  and  terri- 
tory from  the  jurisdiction  of  his  government,  thus  render- 
ing war  a  necessity,  and  actually  inaugurating  the  present 


lamentable  war:  by  his  official  denunciation  of  the  Con* 
federate  States,  as  '-rebel"  and  "disloyal"  States,  for  their 
rightful  withdrawal  from  their  faithless  associate  States, 
whilst  no  word  of  censure  has  ever  fallen  from  him  against 
those  faithless  States  who  were  truly  "disloyal"  to  the" 
Union  and  the  Constitution  which  was  the  only  cement  of 
the  Union,  and  who  were  the  true  authors  of  all  the  wrong 
and  all  the  mischief  of  the  separation,  thus  insulting  the  in- 
nocent bj^  charging  upon  them  the  crimes  of  his  own  guil- 
ty allies:  And  finally,  by  his  monstrous  usurpations  of 
pawer  and  undisguised  repudiation  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, and  his  mocking  scheme  of  securing  a  Republican  form 
of  government  to  sovereign  States  by  putting  nine-tenths 
of  the  people  under  the  dominion  ,  of  one-tenth,  who  may 
be  abject  enough  to  swear  allegiance  to  his  usurpation, 
thus  betraying  his  design  to  subvert  true  constitutional  re- 
publicanism in  the  North  as  well  as  the  South. 

6th.  That   while   we  regard    the  present  war   between 
these  Confederate  States  and   the  United  States  as  a  huge 
crime,  whose  beginning  and  continuance  are  justly  charge- 
able  to  the   government  of    our  enemy,    yet   w^e   do  not 
hesitate   to  affirm   that,  if  our  own  government,  and  the 
people  of  both  governments,  would  avoid  all  participation 
in  the  guilt  of  its  continuance,  it  becomes  all  of  them,  on 
all    proper    occasions,  and  in  all  proper  ways — the  people 
acting  through    their   State  organizations  and  popular  as- 
semblies, and  our  government  through    its  appropriate  <3e- 
partments — to  use  their  earnest  efforts  to  put  an  end  to  this 
unnatural,    unchristian  and   savage  worl^    of  carnage  and 
havoc.     And  to  this  end,  we  earnestly  recommend  that  our 
government,  immediately  after  signal  successes  of  oUr  arras, 
and  on  other  occasions,  when  none  can  impute  its  action  to 
alarm,    instead  of  a  sincere  desire  for  peace,  shall  make  to 
the   government  of  our  enemy,  an   official  offer   of  peace, 
on  the  basis  of  the  great  principle    declared    by  our  com- 
mon fathers   in   177G,  accompanied  by  the  distinct  expres- 
sion of  a  willingness,  on  onr  part,  to  follow  that  principle 
to  its  true  logical  consequences,  by   agreeing  that  any  bor- 
der State,    whose  preference  for   our   association  may  be 
doubted,  (doubts  having  been  expressed  as  to  the  wishes  of 
the  border  States)  shall  settle  the  question  for  herself,  by  a 
Convention,  to  be  elected  for  that  purpose,  after  the  with- 
drawal of  all  military   forces,  of  both  sides,   from  her  lim- 
its/ 

7th.  That  we    believe  this   course,    on  the  part   of  our 

government,  would  constantly  weaken,  and  sooner  or  later, 

break  down  the  war  power  of  our  enemy,  by  showing  to 

his   people   the   justice  of   our  cause,  our  willingness  to 

make  peace  on  the  principles  of  1776,  and  the  shoulder^} 


on  "which  rests  the  respon&ibil  ty  for  the  continuance  of  the 
unnatual  strife;  that  it  would  be  hailed  by  our  people  and 
citizen  soldiery,  who  are  bearing  the  brunt  of  tho  war,  as 
an  assurance  that  peace  will  no!  be  unnecessarily  delayed,  nor 
their  sufferings  unnecessarily  prolonged ;  and  that  it  would 
be  regretted  by  nobody  on  either  side,  except  men  whose 
importance,  or  whose  gains,  would  be  diminished  by  peace, 
and  men  whose  ambitious  designs  would  need  cover 
under  the  ever-recurring  plea  of  the  necessities   of  war. 

8th.  That  wiiile  \he  foregoing  is   an   expression  ot  the 
sentiments  of  this  General  Ap«3mbly   respecting  the  mi. n- 
ner  in  which  peace  should  be   nought,  we  renew  our  pledf^- 
es  of  the  resources  and  power  of  this  State    to  the  prose- 
cution of  the   war,  defensive  <m   our  part,    until  peace   i? 
obtained  upon  just  and  honom^le  ternls,  and  until  the  in- 
dependence and   nationality  of   the  Confederate  States  is 
established  upon  a  permanent  .\nd  enduring  basis. 
THO^      HAKDEMAN, 
Speaker  Louse  Represesjpntativei. 
L.  Carkington,  '      • 

Clerk  House  Represen^^ttives. 

PETI'^i  CONE, 
rree'de)  yof  S^:>nate,  Pro.  Tern. 
L.  H.  Kenak, 

Secretary  of  Senate 
Approved  March  Wib,   1^*  4. 

JOSE'''H  E.  BROWN, 

Governor. 


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